2009-10-15
Explanation
This comic depicts a scene between Hitler and one of his military officers. The officer says, "My Fuhrer... if they really controlled the world's wealth, wouldn't they have bigger hats?" Hitler responds with a stunned "My God..." The caption below reads: "Shortly before Hitler's suicide."
The joke operates on multiple levels. It satirizes the absurdity of antisemitic conspiracy theories by having an officer challenge them with an equally absurd but strangely logical counter-argument: if a group truly controlled all the world's wealth, surely they would spend some of it on impressively large hats. The implication is that this simple, silly observation is what finally caused Hitler to realize the fundamental irrationality of his ideology, leading to his despair. Of course, this is historically absurd -- but that is the point. The comic mocks the logical bankruptcy of bigotry by showing it can be dismantled by an argument about hat sizes.
The votey panel shows someone asking the cartoonist, "Why are you looking up Nazis and naked Burt Reynolds photos?" to which he sheepishly replies, "...Comics." This is a meta-joke about the strange research rabbit holes a cartoonist falls into, and the difficulty of explaining one's browser history when making comics on sensitive topics.